Reunion:Rewritten
by eva-david
Summary: The team hasn't heard from Ziva for several months but one day, Tony bumps into her on the street. By accident?   Ziva centric; a little Tiva maybe.
1. Chapter 1

She felt their eyes on her again. This past week, she had felt them watching. They were on the street. They were in the cars passing by. They were the waiters at the restaurants, the clerks at the shops, they were everywhere. They were in her thoughts.

She couldn't walk down the street without constantly looking over her shoulder – without the fear of being attacked. She hadn't been able to do that in a long time.

That particular day was worse. It was hot for a day in mid-April and the heat reminded her of that place. Every look she got frightened her, every time someone accidently brushed her she jumped and after only five minutes on the crowded streets of D.C. she decided it'd be best she turned around and took another way to get to one of her apartments. She had several of them to hide from whoever was watching, to confuse whoever tried to find a pattern in her routine. In a matter of moments she stood in an alley. Alone. Or at least so she thought.

His last step had given him away. The sound of someone taking a step was barely audible to untrained ears but she was on high alert. She quickly managed to throw him on the ground and put the barrel of her gun to his chest without even thinking about it. But then she recognized him.

He didn't even know what had happened when he found himself lying on the ground with a gun to his chest – the exact same position as in Tel Aviv all these months ago. This time though, her eyes didn't threaten him. They were widened. She actually looked scared!

They stared at each other for a long moment before he slowly moved his hand to his chest to point the gun away from his body. She found it hard to move at first but eventually, she just jumped off him and landed on her feet in barely one second. Ninja skills.

He needed a moment to sort out his thoughts but she already knew what her next move would be. She'd run. Slowly, aware of the fact that he was armed, too, she put her gun back into the holster.

Her movements didn't scare him though. If she had wanted to kill him, she could have done it months ago. He just remained motionless on the tarmac of the dark, quiet alley. Then, all of the sudden, she was gone. And Anthony DiNozzo had no idea whether he should believe what he had just seen.

He sat up, adjusted his clothing and looked around. There was no one there. No one except him. He stood up and put his hand on his chest where – so he could swear – Ziva Davids' gun had been pressed moments ago.

Suddenly something on the ground caught his eye. The handle of a knife. Without a blade? A Jack knife? He picked it up and flipped it open. Hebrew letters.

**To be continued…**

_I know, so many questions… There'll be more, it's already written so if you want to read it, leave a review._ ;)


	2. Chapter 2

She was desperate. Otherwise she would have never come to his place.

She had spent four days thinking about how to best approach him but had not come up with a solution. It was still hard to believe that they had really bumped into each other like that. She had thought moving back to D.C. would be safe. After all, it was a big city. There was barely a chance that she'd meet anyone of her old life again if she stayed away from certain places. So the big question was: How had Tony found her?

At first, confronting him had seemed like a good idea. That was until she stood there outside his apartment, trying to come up with the courage to knock. But here she was and she really needed to have her knife back. And so she knocked.

He had almost given up all his hopes on seeing her ever again. He knew that if she wanted to disappear, she could. At least she had been able to when he had known her. After those four days he had spent waiting almost all his hope was gone.

He hadn't been able to forget her eyes, never. But now, his memories were mixed. There were the beautiful eyes he remembered from only a few months ago. The independence had radiated from her then. There was the scary, threatening look she had given him in Tel Aviv. And now the scary look he had gotten in that alley. Different scary, though. Never had she displayed fear, she had always been a warrior, afraid of nothing and no one. She had been able to look death in the eye and at the same time defuse a bomb without her hands shaking even once.

That day in the alley, she had been scared and it went without saying that he had never seen her like that. Now he wondered what it had taken to put that look into her eyes.

At first, he didn't even notice the barely audible knock at his front door but when he finally did, he couldn't help but run for the door in order not to miss her.

There she stood. She was wearing the black hoody again to cover her hair and most of her face. Hands in her pockets she looked up at him.

"You are staring." A simple statement. No big deal. Except it was. It was the first time he had heard her say something in well over a year.

"Still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that you're alive, I guess." Now Ziva was staring. He stepped back to let her in. "You're gonna have to come in if you want your knife back."

She hesitantly followed him inside, not before scanning the room for possible threats and closed the door behind her. He wandered off to where Ziva guessed the kitchen was. "Do you want to join me for dinner?" He asked casually.

When she had finally processed what he had said, she was standing in the doorway to his kitchen, watching him make pasta. "You thought I was dead?"

He stopped dead in his tracks. After a long moment of staring at her he finally chocked out a "Yes." When she didn't respond he exclaimed "For exactly 573 days. Not counting last Wednesday when I first saw you on the street."

She nodded slowly then jumped when the kitchen timer beeped. They set the table together without another word as if they'd never been apart but Tony noticed how she avoided to touch him.

"Were you playing spy on me?" She suddenly blurted out.

Tony just stared at her in disbelief. "Excuse me?" He asked, somewhat confused by her question.

"It is only a matter of security. Someone is watching me – I just need to know if it is you?"

"Well, in that case… I guess you could say that I tried to follow you as soon as I recognized you last Wednesday… I mean I just wanted to be sure that it was you and all. We all thought that you were dead! Even your father said so but if it helps, I have not told anyone else yet." He said.

Ziva had only heard the first two sentences. If Tony could find and follow her that easily she could almost be sure that anyone else could, too. This was just a nightmare. She should have never stayed at that one place for more than five days. How had she allowed herself to fall into a routine like that. It made people vulnerable and a lot easier to hit when they had a routine. She just couldn't believe this.

When Tony noticed that her thoughts were someplace else, he took a moment to study her. She wore baggy clothes but he could see that she was thinner than the last time he'd seen her in Tel Aviv. She was also pale and her hair wasn't straightened which made her look even less like the woman he had known. Her hands were neatly folded on the kitchen table and when he took a moment to examine them a little closer he suddenly noticed that several of her fingers were swollen and slightly purplish. He frowned at that observation and reached out to touch one of her hands.

The movement so close to her body made her snap out of her thoughts and she accusingly looked at Tony whose eyes now held deep concern.

"What happened to you, Ziva?"

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><p><strong>Tbc<strong>

Please tell me what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

Before Ziva could even think of an answer Tony's doorbell rang. They both remained motionless and for several seconds before she broke eye contact pushed her chair back to stand. Tony quickly gave her hand which was now on the edge of the table a gentle squeeze, careful not to hurt her and then ran for the door, leaving her standing in the kitchen. She felt trapped. There was no way she could convince him that she was ok, her injuries were too obvious. She needed time to think and so she closed her eyes and tried to remember if she had seen a bathroom in his apartment somewhere. Soon, she found it and locked the door behind her. She slid down with her back to the door and took a deep breath only to be reminded that her ribs were still sore, too.

She was a mess. She realized that she could not shake him of by saying that she had fallen or something, but was there anything else that could explain four broken fingers in total? Defeated, she let her head fall against the wooden door. Then she realized that in all the years that she had known Tony, he had never seen her as a Mossad agent on duty. He had no idea as to what she had done before she'd come to NCIS except that she'd been undercover in the UK for several months. What if she just said that it was normal to break your fingers when you were with Mossad? He had no way of knowing. With a soft sigh, she got up and looked around. Whatever she'd thought his bathroom would be like, she'd never imagined it to be so clean. There were no clothes on the floor and everything on his shelves seemed to be in place. Only one toothbrush. Interesting, but really; when had he ever had long term girlfriends? Another sigh escaped her lips before she heard a soft knock on the door. Back to the job at hand – getting her knife back.

"Ziva? Are you in there?" She heard Tony ask. After flushing the toilet and a quick glance in the mirror she finally opened the door to find him leaning against the wall studying her.

"Are you ok, Ziva?" He asked, his face still holding the serious expression of their previous conversation.

She rolled her eyes, sighed and faked annoyance. "No. I am not ok, Tony. I have four broken fingers." She paused and hoped that her explanation would satisfy him. "It is what happens to you when you train close combat almost every single day of the week."

Tony studied her intently. He knew that something was off. Ziva never volunteered information that easily. At least she hadn't when he'd known her. Eventually he decided to let it go for the moment.

"So why don't we just go eat that pasta I've cooked? You look starving." He grinned, attempted to put his hand on her arm before realizing that she hadn't wanted to be touched before and then simply turning around.

_Well, I don't feel that way. _She thought but gritted her teeth and followed him back to the kitchen. She felt bad about the fact that he now seemed tiptoe around her in order not to frighten her but being touched was still hard for her. Contact with another human being had too often meant violent beatings.

She politely declined the wine he offered her and accepted a glass of water. The pasta-thing was a different story. She knew that she wouldn't be able to eat that whole plate of food – but how could she not? The last thing she needed was him worrying about her eating habits. She managed to get through one third of her plate while chatting over simple things like how D.C. changed with the seasons or which new movies had been released over the past months before they fell into a comfortable silence. Then suddenly they heard a clattering sound from outside the kitchen. Ziva instantly sprung to her feet and was on high alert, pulling a gun out from under her shirt and not even wincing at her bruised fingers.

* * *

><p><strong>Tbc<strong>

_Thanks everyone for the reviews, alerts and faves. Real life is just incredibly busy right now so it could take me up to a week to post the next chapter. Please feel free to point out any mistakes I made, especially with the English language!_


	4. Chapter 4

Tony just stared after her as she rounded the corner into his living-room. He was not armed and there was no weapon in his kitchen that he could use to protect himself. Well, there were the knifes but he didn't really trust himself with them. He'd have to rely on Ziva, his good old Mossad-ninja. But was she up for defending herself if it came down to it? She looked so defeated, dark rings around her eyes, never once smiling and he suspected that the curves he had always admired weren't as round anymore as they used to be. He slowly approached the door to the living-room and listened carefully. He couldn't hear a thing, which was good, considering that there was probably no one else in his apartment but it also meant that Ziva wasn't there. He quietly rounded the corner and was relieved to find Ziva squatting between his coffee table and the sofa, his cell in here hand. She looked up at him with a stealthy expression.

"It was your phone, I think it vibrated and fell off the coffee table on the floor." She said and stared at the phone.

They stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity. Then Ziva slowly placed the phone on the table again and seemed to compose herself. She held onto the edge of the sofa and slowly pushed herself up on her legs. When trying to stand upright again the word "Leazazel!" escaped her lips. It sounded a lot like a curse. She brought one hand to her side and let it remain there as she looked at Tony again. Her face still didn't hold an expression but to him it was obvious that she was in pain. Tony didn't like seeing his old partner like that. He knew that if he'd let her, she'd keep playing the invincible ninja and leave without another comment about here fairly obvious injuries but he was not about to let that happen.

"Another injury from improving your close combat skills?" He asked sarcastically.

Her face remained blank but behind those hazel eyes he knew that her wheels were spinning.

"Come on, Ziva. Do you really think that you can hide that from me? What good would you be to Mossad if your fingers were constantly broken because of your training?" He asked, his voice soft and calming.

Ziva mentally cursed herself. When had she become so weak? She shouldn't have come here, shouldn't have moved to D.C. at all.

What now? She couldn't possibly lie to him again. She could just leave and let him wonder. Tony would forget, maybe even think that it had all been a dream. But that would very likely mean that she' never see her knife again, her mother's old jack-knife. The only weapon she had ever possessed. No, she couldn't do that. That meant that she would have to tell Tony something about where she'd been over the past months. But how was she supposed to do that? She hadn't ever talked about it to anyone and now Tony? Deep inside she knew that she'd have to talk about it someday. _But not tonight, _she decided. She could just tell him that she wasn't ready to talk about it. That should do it, right?

* * *

><p>Happy Mothers Day to everyone!<p>

I'm sorry it took me so long. I'm just gonna blame school.

„Leazazel" means something like 'hell' for those who don't speak Hebrew…


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